Pennsylvania and Michigan warn of election result delays as Texas heads to court over plan to throw out 100,000 votes

‘The volume of votes that are coming in is like nothing we have ever seen before’

Fears of the looming disorder on Election Day tomorrow are seemingly unravelling as two battleground states announce expected delays due to mail in voting alongside calls for refusals of over 100,000 votes in Texas.

With only a day to go before Donald Trump and Joe Biden go head to head, swing states Pennsylvania and Michigan have suggested that they may not be able to deliver results on election night due to the volume of mail in ballots.

Elsewhere, a federal judge in Texas has announced they will consider a request by Republicans to toss more than 127,000 votes from a democratic leaning part of the state.

There have been widespread fears in the run up to the 2020 election that the final result will be delayed as some states become overwhelmed with an unprecented number of mail-in ballots which have skyrocketed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

On Sunday, Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar warned that it will be “days” after election day until all ballots in the state are fully counted with nearly 2.4 million residents having already case their ballot by mail.

“This is going to be 10 times as many as the last time we had a presidential election in Pennsylvania. So, yes, it will take longer. But having said that, I want to be clear that elections have never been called election night,” she said on NBC’s Meet the Press.

Similarly, on Monday, Gov Gretchen Whitmer told reporters on CNN’s State of the Union to set their expectations for how quickly votes will be counted in the state, warning “its going to take time to count”.

“We are trying to make sure everyone in the press understands the volume of votes that are coming in is like nothing we have ever seen before and it is going to take time to count. It’s more important that we get a count that is accurate than a count that is fast,” she said.

Experts have long predicted that the result in both states would be delayed as the demand for mail-in voting surged amidst the pandemic, as the voting systems in the areas are not accustomed to cope with large volumes of absentee votes.

“There is no chance that we will know on election night the full vote total in Michigan,” Marc Elias, an election lawyer with prominent Democratic clients, told NBC News in June.

“Neither Michigan nor Pennsylvania have a history of large numbers of absentee ballots being cast. And Michigan law prohibits the absentee ballots from even starting to be counted until polls are closed.”

The predictions come amidst fears that Mr Trump and his campaign will attempt to have any ballots counted after 3 November thrown out amid baseless claims of election fraud.

Mr Trump told reporters on Sunday that he will be “going in with our lawyers” as soon as polls close to stop the counting of ballots.

An appeal at the Supreme Court over the counting of absentee ballots in Pennsylvania that are received in the mail in the three days after the election is already pending.

The president has been vocal in his criticism of widespread mail-in voting in the run-up to the election and has been reluctant to commit to a peaceful transfer of power, highlighting his scepticism of this year's election process.  

"They talk about, ‘Will you accept a peaceful transfer?’ And the answer is yes, I will – but I want it to be an honest election, and so does everybody else,” he said during a town hall event aired on NBC.

Documented cases of mail-ballot fraud are extremely rare and experts have said successful mail-in fraud by foreign actors by mailing out fake ballots would be near impossible, Reuters reported.

In Texas, Democratic challengers secured a win in the courts as a federal judge agreed to consider a request to toss out more than 127,000 votes cast at drive-through voting sites in Houston.  

Republicans argued that Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins, a Democrat, did not have constitutional authority to allow drive-through voting as an alternative to walk-in voting.  

The Texas Supreme Court shot down a similar bid on Sunday by the same plaintiffs who include: Hotze, a conservative activist, and state Representative Steve Toth.

As expected, a record number of Americans have participated in early voting ahead of this year's election with many Americans hesitant to wait in long lines to cast votes in person due to health risks.

As of Monday more than 96 million Americans had already cast their ballots, according to the US Elections Project, a database compiled by Michael McDonald, a professor at the University of Florida.

With the election just a day away, the RealClear Politics National polling average has Joe Biden leading Mr Trump by 6.5 percentage points.

Additional reporting by the Associated Press